The paper shows that an IMF-like coinsurance arrangement among countries can play a useful role in the global financial system. The operation of the coinsurance arrangement is examined under different loan contracts. It shows that, if the IMF's objective is to safeguard its resources and be...

A semi-Markov model of turnover, resulting from optimizing behavior on the part of workers, is developed. Duration dependence in the transition out of employment is modelled as resulting from a layoff probability which decreases with tenure. Some preliminary results, based on DIME data, are...

Recent studies of job tenure raise the question of the appropriate duration statistic to use in historical research. This article compares duration measures and examines their empirical and theoretical implications for historical research on employment tenure. Using a variety of data from the...

This essay considers strategies that developing and emerging-market economies might use when seeking to exit from currency pegs. It also considers techniques for completing the move to greater flexibility, as well as the scope for adopting inflation targeting as a nominal anchor following an...

The two major prerequisites for adopting inflation targeting are a degree of independence of monetary policy and absence of commitment to a particular level for the exchange rate. A country satisfying these requirements could choose to conduct its monetary policy in a framework of inflation...

The surge in private capital flows to developing countries during the 1990s has largely by-passed sub-Saharan Africa. In sharp contrast to the earlier lending boom of 1977-82, when sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 8.9 percent of total private flows to developing countries, the region accounted...

Optimal management of resources could involve policies that lead to conservation or complete depletion of a resource. In the framework of a continuous time dynamic programming problem, a method for determining critical stocks, which partition these different optimal policies, is outlined. Such a...

The paper proposes a framework for examining the process of financial market development. The framework, consistent with the functional view of financial system design, is anchored in studying the incentives facing the key players in financial markets-borrowers, lenders, liquidity providers, and...